บทที่ บทที่ 24 · Chapter XXIV

Poor Elizabeth-Jane, little thinking what her malignant star had done

to blast the budding attentions she had won from Donald Farfrae, was

glad to hear Lucetta’s words about remaining.

For in addition to Lucetta’s house being a home, that raking view of

the market-place which it afforded had as much attraction for her as

for Lucetta. The _carrefour_ was like the regulation Open Place in

spectacular dramas, where the incidents that occur always happen to

bear on the lives of the adjoining residents. Farmers, merchants,

dairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and

disappeared as the afternoon wasted away. It was the node of all

orbits.

From Saturday to Saturday was as from day to day with the two young

women now. In an emotional sense they did not live at all during the

intervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on

market-day they were sure to be at home. Both stole sly glances out of

the window at Farfrae’s shoulders and poll. His face they seldom saw,

for, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he

avoided looking towards their quarters.

Thus things went on, till a certain market-morning brought a new

sensation. Elizabeth and Lucetta were sitting at breakfast when a

parcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She

called Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend’s bedroom

Elizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the bed, one of a deep cherry

colour, the other lighter—a glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a

bonnet at the top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Lucetta

standing beside the suggested human figure in an attitude of

contemplation.

“I wouldn’t think so hard about it,” said Elizabeth, marking the

intensity with which Lucetta was alternating the question whether this

or that would suit best.

“But settling upon new clothes is so trying,” said Lucetta. “You are

that person” (pointing to one of the arrangements), “or you are _that_

totally different person” (pointing to the other), “for the whole of

the coming spring and one of the two, you don’t know which, may turn

out to be very objectionable.”

It was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the

cherry-coloured person at all hazards. The dress was pronounced to be a

fit, and Lucetta walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth

following her.

The morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year. The sun fell

so flat on the houses and pavement opposite Lucetta’s residence that

they poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumbling

of wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of

circling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to

the window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had

come to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.

It was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill,

till then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country,

where the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days

of the Heptarchy. Its arrival created about as much sensation in the

corn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The

farmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and

into it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and

red, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and

shrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an

upright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck

Lucetta. “Why, it is a sort of agricultural piano,” she said.

“It has something to do with corn,” said Elizabeth.

“I wonder who thought of introducing it here?”

Donald Farfrae was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though

not a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations. And as if

in response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the

machine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about

its make. The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and

Elizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as

if absorbed in the panelling of the wall. She hardly knew that she had

done this till Lucetta, animated by the conjunction of her new attire

with the sight of Farfrae, spoke out: “Let us go and look at the

instrument, whatever it is.”

Elizabeth-Jane’s bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and

they went out. Among all the agriculturists gathered round the only

appropriate possessor of the new machine seemed to be Lucetta, because

she alone rivalled it in colour.

They examined it curiously; observing the rows of trumpet-shaped tubes

one within the other, the little scoops, like revolving salt-spoons,

which tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted

it to the ground; till somebody said, “Good morning, Elizabeth-Jane.”

She looked up, and there was her stepfather.

His greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and Elizabeth-Jane,

embarrassed out of her equanimity, stammered at random, “This is the

lady I live with, father—Miss Templeman.”

Henchard put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great

wave till it met his body at the knee. Miss Templeman bowed. “I am

happy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Henchard,” she said. “This is

a curious machine.”

“Yes,” Henchard replied; and he proceeded to explain it, and still more

forcibly to ridicule it.

“Who brought it here?” said Lucetta.

“Oh, don’t ask me, ma’am!” said Henchard. “The thing—why ’tis

impossible it should act. ’Twas brought here by one of our machinists

on the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow who

thinks——” His eye caught Elizabeth-Jane’s imploring face, and he

stopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing.

He turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his

stepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur

apparently came from Henchard’s lips in which she detected the words,

“You refused to see me!” reproachfully addressed to Lucetta. She could

not believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather; unless,

indeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered

farmers near them. Yet Lucetta seemed silent, and then all thought of

the incident was dissipated by the humming of a song, which sounded as

though from the interior of the machine. Henchard had by this time

vanished into the market-house, and both the women glanced towards the

corn-drill. They could see behind it the bent back of a man who was

pushing his head into the internal works to master their simple

secrets. The hummed song went on—

“’Tw—s on a s—m—r aftern—n,

A wee be—re the s—n w—nt d—n,

When Kitty wi’ a braw n—w g—wn

C—me ow’re the h—lls to Gowrie.”

Elizabeth-Jane had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked

guilty of she did not know what. Lucetta next recognized him, and more

mistress of herself said archly, “The ‘Lass of Gowrie’ from inside of a

seed-drill—what a phenomenon!”

Satisfied at last with his investigation the young man stood upright,

and met their eyes across the summit.

“We are looking at the wonderful new drill,” Miss Templeman said. “But

practically it is a stupid thing—is it not?” she added, on the strength

of Henchard’s information.

“Stupid? O no!” said Farfrae gravely. “It will revolutionize sowing

heerabout! No more sowers flinging their seed about broadcast, so that

some falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that. Each

grain will go straight to its intended place, and nowhere else

whatever!”

“Then the romance of the sower is gone for good,” observed

Elizabeth-Jane, who felt herself at one with Farfrae in Bible-reading

at least. “‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow,’ so the Preacher

said; but his words will not be to the point any more. How things

change!”

“Ay; ay.... It must be so!” Donald admitted, his gaze fixing itself on

a blank point far away. “But the machines are already very common in

the East and North of England,” he added apologetically.

Lucetta seemed to be outside this train of sentiment, her acquaintance

with the Scriptures being somewhat limited. “Is the machine yours?” she

asked of Farfrae.

“O no, madam,” said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the

sound of her voice, though with Elizabeth-Jane he was quite at his

ease. “No, no—I merely recommended that it should be got.”

In the silence which followed Farfrae appeared only conscious of her;

to have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of

existence than she appertained to. Lucetta, discerning that he was much

mixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his

romantic one, said gaily to him—

“Well, don’t forsake the machine for us,” and went indoors with her

companion.

The latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was

unaccountable to her. Lucetta explained the matter somewhat by saying

when they were again in the sitting-room—

“I had occasion to speak to Mr. Farfrae the other day, and so I knew

him this morning.”

Lucetta was very kind towards Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the

market thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow decline

of the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street

endways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. The

gigs and vans disappeared one by one till there was not a vehicle in

the street. The time of the riding world was over; the pedestrian world

held sway. Field labourers and their wives and children trooped in from

the villages for their weekly shopping, and instead of a rattle of

wheels and a tramp of horses ruling the sound as earlier, there was

nothing but the shuffle of many feet. All the implements were gone; all

the farmers; all the moneyed class. The character of the town’s trading

had changed from bulk to multiplicity and pence were handled now as

pounds had been handled earlier in the day.

Lucetta and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night and

the street lamps were lighted, they had kept their shutters unclosed.

In the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely.

“Your father was distant with you,” said Lucetta.

“Yes.” And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Henchard’s seeming

speech to Lucetta she continued, “It is because he does not think I am

respectable. I have tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in

vain! My mother’s separation from my father was unfortunate for me. You

don’t know what it is to have shadows like that upon your life.”

Lucetta seemed to wince. “I do not—of that kind precisely,” she said,

“but you may feel a—sense of disgrace—shame—in other ways.”

“Have you ever had any such feeling?” said the younger innocently.

“O no,” said Lucetta quickly. “I was thinking of—what happens sometimes

when women get themselves in strange positions in the eyes of the world

from no fault of their own.”

“It must make them very unhappy afterwards.”

“It makes them anxious; for might not other women despise them?”

“Not altogether despise them. Yet not quite like or respect them.”

Lucetta winced again. Her past was by no means secure from

investigation, even in Casterbridge. For one thing Henchard had never

returned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in

her first excitement. Possibly they were destroyed; but she could have

wished that they had never been written.

The rencounter with Farfrae and his bearings towards Lucetta had made

the reflective Elizabeth more observant of her brilliant and amiable

companion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Lucetta’s as the

latter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was

nourishing a hope of seeing the attractive Scotchman. The fact was

printed large all over Lucetta’s cheeks and eyes to any one who could

read her as Elizabeth-Jane was beginning to do. Lucetta passed on and

closed the street door.

A seer’s spirit took possession of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down

by the fire and divine events so surely from data already her own that

they could be held as witnessed. She followed Lucetta thus mentally—saw

her encounter Donald somewhere as if by chance—saw him wear his special

look when meeting women, with an added intensity because this one was

Lucetta. She depicted his impassioned manner; beheld the indecision of

both between their lothness to separate and their desire not to be

observed; depicted their shaking of hands; how they probably parted

with frigidity in their general contour and movements, only in the

smaller features showing the spark of passion, thus invisible to all

but themselves. This discerning silent witch had not done thinking of

these things when Lucetta came noiselessly behind her and made her

start.

It was all true as she had pictured—she could have sworn it. Lucetta

had a heightened luminousness in her eye over and above the advanced

colour of her cheeks.

“You’ve seen Mr. Farfrae,” said Elizabeth demurely.

“Yes,” said Lucetta. “How did you know?”

She knelt down on the hearth and took her friend’s hands excitedly in

her own. But after all she did not say when or how she had seen him or

what he had said.

That night she became restless; in the morning she was feverish; and at

breakfast-time she told her companion that she had something on her

mind—something which concerned a person in whom she was interested

much. Elizabeth was earnest to listen and sympathize.

“This person—a lady—once admired a man much—very much,” she said

tentatively.

“Ah,” said Elizabeth-Jane.

“They were intimate—rather. He did not think so deeply of her as she

did of him. But in an impulsive moment, purely out of reparation, he

proposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an unsuspected

hitch in the proceedings; though she had been so far compromised with

him that she felt she could never belong to another man, as a pure

matter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they were

much apart, heard nothing of each other for a long time, and she felt

her life quite closed up for her.”

“Ah—poor girl!”

“She suffered much on account of him; though I should add that he could

not altogether be blamed for what had happened. At last the obstacle

which separated them was providentially removed; and he came to marry

her.”

“How delightful!”

“But in the interval she—my poor friend—had seen a man, she liked

better than him. Now comes the point: Could she in honour dismiss the

first?”

“A new man she liked better—that’s bad!”

“Yes,” said Lucetta, looking pained at a boy who was swinging the town

pump-handle. “It is bad! Though you must remember that she was forced

into an equivocal position with the first man by an accident—that he

was not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had

discovered some qualities in the first that rendered him less desirable

as a husband than she had at first thought him to be.”

“I cannot answer,” said Elizabeth-Jane thoughtfully. “It is so

difficult. It wants a Pope to settle that!”

“You prefer not to perhaps?” Lucetta showed in her appealing tone how

much she leant on Elizabeth’s judgment.

“Yes, Miss Templeman,” admitted Elizabeth. “I would rather not say.”

Nevertheless, Lucetta seemed relieved by the simple fact of having

opened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her

headache. “Bring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?” she

said languidly.

“Well—a little worn,” answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes a

doubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Lucetta to survey

herself in it, which Lucetta anxiously did.

“I wonder if I wear well, as times go!” she observed after a while.

“Yes—fairly.

“Where am I worst?”

“Under your eyes—I notice a little brownness there.”

“Yes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years more do you think

I shall last before I get hopelessly plain?”

There was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though the

younger, had come to play the part of experienced sage in these

discussions. “It may be five years,” she said judicially. “Or, with a

quiet life, as many as ten. With no love you might calculate on ten.”

Lucetta seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial

verdict. She told Elizabeth-Jane no more of the past attachment she had

roughly adumbrated as the experiences of a third person; and Elizabeth,

who in spite of her philosophy was very tender-hearted, sighed that

night in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich Lucetta did not treat

her to the full confidence of names and dates in her confessions. For

by the “she” of Lucetta’s story Elizabeth had not been beguiled.